11.23.2011 08:34 PM

My Lord

I actually agree with some of the things Alf Apps says.

Wow. The apocalypse is imminent.

19 Comments

  1. Dan says:

    Wow, if only he realized this 10 years sooner and fired himself.

  2. The Doctor says:

    A closely related topic, IMO, is whatever happened with that Ideas Conference that the LPC had a while back, at Iggy’s behest. Did anything concrete result from that? Did anything generated from that conference actually make its way into party policy?

    There’s that old saying that every crisis presents an opportunity. It seems to me that this is a chance for the LPC to really focus on policy. The last time that the LPC seized power from an opponent was 1993. There’s more than one reason that the Liberals were so successful that election, BUT one reason IMO is that the LPC, via the Red Book, presented a clear, distinctive plan for governing this country. It wasn’t something reactive, it was something proactive. Personally, I think that’s what needs to be done. Look at our tax system, for instance. There’s lots of stuff out there these days about fundamentally reforming it. Why not be bold?

    • Ted says:

      Actually, I think a fair bit of that conference made it into policy, like some of the assistance to seniors and to families taking time off to assist ill family members, and educational help. That was definitely proactive and not reactive.

      But no one wanted to talk about policies and the Liberals didn’t do a great job of selling policies, again.

      It took 5 years from the 1960 Kingston Conference before real policies and a whole platform were developed and it launched the Liberals into a transformative change government.

      • The Doctor says:

        Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? The Liberals have until 2015 until there’s another election. They should focus on coming up an actual coherent plan for governing this country. Lots of Canadians will respond to that scenario: a tired, petulant, uber-partisan Conservative Party; an immature, union-dominated, NDP which is excessively hostile to business and wealth creation; and a responsible Liberal Party with a track record of sound fiscal management etc.

        • Philip says:

          Exactly this. There opportunity here for the Liberal Party. The center is wide open now but may not be for long if the Conservatives try to re-brand themselves as a centrist party again. I’m not sure the Conservatives can pull that trick off again but they will try in 2012.

    • Ted says:

      The CPC told their policy convention to shut up and not expect anything they do to matter.

      And the problem the NDP has always had is that they let the nutbar policies of their grassroots dictate what the party would take to an election. The last 5 years they’ve been busy trying to gut all of that. For example, the reason they won was not because they grew across Canada so much but because they grew in Quebec. And the reason they grew in Quebec was because of Layton’s personal popularity and the top-down Sherbrooke Declaration which is anathema to most non-Quebec Dippers.

      It is not the top down policy making process that has disengaged the Liberals from ordinary Canadians. It is that they haven’t even bothered to try to come up with much in the way of policies or fresh thinking.

      Frankly, what the last 4 elections have shown (if not more), is that policy doesn’t matter one bit. The Conservatives didn’t even bother to put out one single ad – positive or negative – about policy.

      • pomojen says:

        As as for the rest of his comments you’ve got….nothing? What about the lack of a single policy in a television ad? And what were those ads about…Hmmm…

        PS – Hey Ted, Captcha is onto my NDP voting tendencies: NTTY.

    • Pete says:

      In your province the grassroots got engaged and the Tories became Liberals overnight by electing Allison Redford.

    • Pat says:

      I think one of the biggest issues could be getting bogged down in specific policies and not understanding the theme that the Liberal Party wants to represent. If it wants to be the party of the centre it needs to make a concerted effort to appeal to people on both the right and the left. It has done this before, and it can certainly do it again.

      The simple solutions would be to have the party be more conservative in its fiscal policy, but liberal in its social policy. If they go into the next election with some clear policies that show they will spend the same as or less than the Tories, that they have an honest plan for paring back spending, and that they actually have a real respect for social programs, they will put themselves in a strong position. If you can tie/beat the Tories on the economy (which they did in the 1990s), and you beat them in social policy (which should be really easy), then you’ll win. For the Liberals to be successful the story needs to become: the Tories are OK with money but hate minorities and social rights and freedoms (multiculturalism, gay marriage, etc), and the NDP will be terrible with money – but the Liberals will be good with money AND respect our social rights and freedoms.

      The problem in the last election is that Iggy just came up with an NDP-lite platform. His spending projections were way above the Tories in a time when Canadians were interested in cutting back – so those voters who were looking for fiscal responsibility tuned out. His social policy was just a weak version of the NDP vision, and we wasn’t respected as much as Jack Layton – so those who vote on solid social policy left.

      I know I’ve heard many times that the Tories have moved closer to the centre, but have they really? They are still big military, big prisons and no social policy – they haven’t done anything to actually push policy forward. This means that there is some room at the centre-right for a party that sets up the right policy framework. People still think the NDP are socialist nutjobs that can’t be trusted with money, and now that Jack is gone they’ll have problems keeping their position. This means that there is some room on the centre-left.

      Being the party of fiscal responsibility with social responsibility (so long as it is fiscally responsible) is a strong play.

      I consider myself a part of the next generation of Liberals, though I am not a current party member (I actually got shunned after the 2008 election for suggesting these things, and for being pissed that the local executive decided to gloat in the local paper about winning the local seat – the election is over, you don’t build respect and support in the community by being a douche). I hope to get involved again, someday.

    • Michael Radan says:

      “The conference was a bust”

      Isn’t it only members of the party that can judge whether or not one of their conferences is a bust?

      Or are you really just a closet Liberal?

  3. bazie says:

    I think it took a defeat as humiliating as it was to really shock the Liberal establishment that a fundamentally more bottom up, grassroots, and democratic process for determining leaders and issues is needed.

  4. Cameron Prymak says:

    First step on the road to renewal is an honest self assessment. This is the beginning of the beginning.

    • The Doctor says:

      I agree that there is a knee-jerk hostility to the resource industry within many circles of the LPC, and I really wonder about the wisdom of that. A lot of Canadians seem oblivious to how many effing jobs in Canada are produced via those industries. A lot of people don’t understand the connections — an example is corporate finance. There are scads of accountants, lawyers, consultants, investment bankers and their legions of support staff and suppliers in Toronto — that’s right, kids, not just Calgary and Vancouver but Toronto — who make a living doing corporate finance for the mining and oil and gas industries. Then there are the geologists, geophysicists etc. Those are high-brain, high-skill jobs, exactly the kind of jobs and skills our country should be promoting. Meanwhile, there are some people in the LPC who seem to basically think that all resource extraction is evil. Some people think all the mining industry does is produce jobs for soot-covered workies digging stuff out of the ground. That’s nuts.

    • Cam Prymak says:

      LIke I said, it’s a beginning.

  5. heather says:

    I think he makes some decent points but I think Jordan says it way better:

    http://jords.tumblr.com/post/13235489114

  6. barry says:

    “But he said that the party’s time in the wilderness could pay-off in the long run.”

    Better get off yer seat and on yer feet and start running…or else people will think it’s just rigour mortis spasms setting in.

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